Marginally Legal

It's the little things that show you care. And when it comes to issues of the AFL's relationship with women, it's the little things that show you really don't give a shit.

I don't suppose that the problem of dealing with reams of hormone-charged, good looking young men, many of them far from home and stocked with cash, is an easy task. However, it's made significantly easier by the fact that most of these guys like what they do and they are on big salaries that would be hard to replicate elsewhere. That's a big carrot, but it's also a big stick to whack them with if they screw up.

By and large, the AFL is getting more comfortable with punishing players for certain indiscretions. Getting drunk on camera, for example, can get you in a whole world of trouble. In fact, getting drunk at all can get you in a lot of trouble. The actions of the "lowest common denominator" have certainly made things a lot less fun for those players who can have a few drinks and avoid getting arrested.

What the AFL is entirely less comfortable with, however, is spelling out to players that treating women badly is not a privilege that comes with the contract.

Wikipedia, that great font of semi-reliable information, provides a "List of Australian rules football incidents" dating back to 1910. While I acknowledge Wikipedia is far from being an exhaustive authority, it's interesting to note there is not a single incident on the list of an AFL player being convicted of rape. On a statistical level, this means one of three things:

- The AFL is a freakish statistical anomaly. I can't help but feel this is akin to those economists that argued that the GFC was the type of event that occur ed once in every six ages of the universe and that the occurrence just co-incidentally occurred in our lifetime; because the alternative was to admit that their models were wrong.
- the AFL is has screened out all rapists. I can't imagine how.
- The AFL has successfully managed to cover up, intimidate and/or pay off anyone who was going to be a 'problem' to them.

Given the last point is the only one that's even vaguely probable, I can't help but feel that the franchise needs to overcome a bit of a credibility issue every time an issue is raised.

It would be wrong to suggest that the position of the AFL hasn't improved over the years; for example, consider the following incident involving all-round nice guy, Brodie Holland:

"Brodie Holland was fined $2,500 for his role in a fight with a young woman over a taxi cab. After Hollands fiancee was involved in a scuffle with the woman, Holland approached calling the woman a "stupid slut" before trying to tackle her, placing her in a headlock after which she bit him on the stomach, before striking her in the head with his fist. His court appearance was pushed back on two occasions so not to clash with his football commitments; once he faced court no conviction was recorded and no punishment handed out from his club, Collingwood."

I suspect that even in the last three years that AFL might have had a rethink about the PR implications of pushing back a court appearance. The position taken with respect to another nice bloke, Andrew Lovett, suggest that there has been some progress. Perhaps Lovett could be the trailblazer in blowing apart the aforementioned lack of rape convictions against AFL players.

However, the franchise is still clearly uncomfortable. I can't help but feel that when two 'senior' St Kilda players were implicated in impregnating a 16 year old the AFL was fighting desperately to avoid the instinct to 'close ranks'. The fact that one of the players managers has come out today saying that "It's a disgrace the way this was put around not only Melbourne yesterday, but Australia and the world rest of the world probably" is an indication that a certain kind of 'boys club' mentality is alive and well in certain quarters.

A brief trawl of a few forums suggests that the implicated players (who have not formally been named) are aged 26 and 27. In my humble opinion, men this age screwing 16 year old girls is pretty shit behaviour. I know it happens. I know it's legal. I can imagine that an unwanted teenage pregnancy is a pretty bad outcome both for the girl involved and the lucky fellow whose sperm won the lottery to have his AFL earnings syphoned off in child support payments.

However, the AFL didn't come out and say any of these things. When once again called upon to implicitly give a view on appropriate behaviour, it said "...this is a private issue between the parties and the AFL will take no further action."